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Oh, magazine recipes. In my quest to create order out of chaos and make recipes out of my magazine pile, I came across a recipe for Orange-Buttermilk Dinner Rolls. It hails from the November 2010 issue of Cooking Light and probably makes a lovely side for a Thanksgiving Dinner.

As it is, it’s barely March but still a very appropriate time for these rolls. As their name implies, the bread uses buttermilk and orange zest for flavor. They are delicious sliced in half, toasted, and served with an egg. They are also good plain. The zest lends a fresh taste and the buttermilk it’s trademark tang. I imagine they would be tasty with turkey and mashed potatoes too.

I’ve been baking most of the Sweet Melissa Sundays recipes but haven’t had time to write about them. The purpose of this post is just to catch up a bit. (I will admit, though, I did not bake the Coconut Custard Pie nor the PumpkinBread Pudding with Caramel Rum-Raisin Sauce).

Wow. It’s been a while. Hello, kitchen. How you doin’? Yes, I’m back in the kitchen and baking again. And it feels great. Too much time has passed since I used it last.

I finally returned to baking with this week’s Sweet Melissa Sundays selection: Carrot Cake with Fresh Orange Cream Cheese Frosting.

I like carrot cake. I think it’s niftier with raisins, which this recipe didn’t have. So I added raisins, which I made drunk by soaking them in rum first. YUM. I also halved the recipe and baked three mini-cakes in my 4″ inch round pans. One went into the freezer for carrot cake emergencies, one went to a party, and one went to the family.

My town was built on oranges. Really, orange groves used to cover the land and you could smell the trees and blossoms. Development over the years has led to the destruction of most of the orange groves to the point where most of the oranges in the grocery stores are shipped in from out of the area.

There’s a group whose goal is to save the remaining orchards through education and selling shares of the crop. These locally grown oranges are the best I’ve ever tasted. You can taste the sunshine. Because of this, I only buy oranges from the farmers’ market.

You can read an interesting article about the history of oranges in my area from the New York Times Travel Section HERE.

This week’s Sweet Melissa Sundays selection uses a whole orange, skin and all, to flavor it. It was a breeze to prepare. I made a third of the recipe (but used half an orange, ate the other half) and made two mini-loaves.

It smelled wonderful going into the oven and smelled even better coming out of the oven. I couldn’t wait to try it. But wait, it needed to be glazed. The cake is glazed with a syrup made from a reduction of fresh orange juice, fresh lemon juice, and sugar.

I really loved this cake the flavor blossomed in the oven and was fresh and light. This is a perfect cake for a tea or shower or just because.

Thanks to Melissa of Lulu the Baker for choosing a great recipe. If you would like the recipe, buy the book or visit Melissa’s blog.